Navigating Mental Health, Creativity, and Business with Lee Rodgers
Alex Kremer speaks with Lee Rodgers in this episode of the Rising Leader podcast about sales, leadership, personal growth, and mental health. They delve into the significance of gratitude practices and being present in sales presentations, as well as how to balance work and personal growth. Mental health's role in leadership is also discussed, and both hosts share their personal stories and reflections on their path to becoming rising leaders.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
- 00:00:00 - Overcoming mental limits through ownership and mindset
- 00:03:27 - Fueling growth through a passion for learning
- 00:06:18 - The journey of learning new skills and finding mentorship
- 00:09:05 - From creativity to entrepreneurship: the story behind starting a company
- 00:13:59 - The benefits of prioritizing mental health in both personal and professional life
- 00:16:23 - Keeping our brain clean from negative energies and entities
- 00:19:09 - Navigating emotions and practicing parts work for mental health support
- 00:22:48 - Men's weekends and the importance of talking about mental health
- 00:25:10 - Practicing gratitude and consistency for a healthy mindset
- 00:26:58 - The role of consistency in meditation and journaling
- 00:30:24 - Being present in sales presentations: the importance of slowing down
- 00:32:49 - Balancing creativity and productivity in the workplace
- 00:34:59 - Automating sales processes with Sift: unique solutions for unique problems
- 00:40:39 - The power of intent: creating a vision and building a team
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Transcript
You take ownership of the decisions you have in your own life.
Speaker:The only limit and this kind of gets in the mental health stuff that I know you and I are both nerds on.
Speaker:But the only limit is really what you can think of frankly, when you feel like you're trapped or you feel like you can't do a certain thing or there's still limitations, what it really is.
Speaker:It's like a mental box, right?
Speaker:Welcome to the Rising Leader podcast.
Speaker:Bringing forth the new wave of rising leadership and helping leaders find purpose, connection and results.
Speaker:This is your host, founder of Alluvial Alex Kramer.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Welcome to the Rising Leader Podcast.
Speaker:I am so grateful that you are here.
Speaker:This is your host, Alex Kramer.
Speaker:We have a good show today with a guest by the name of Lee Rogers before I dive into Lee.
Speaker:What up, man?
Speaker:It's good to see you.
Speaker:How's it going, man?
Speaker:It's good.
Speaker:It's good.
Speaker:Well, Lee and I got connected well, probably like four or five months ago, something along those lines and he is making a splash in the world of leadership in the world of sales also really a pioneer in the world of mental health as well in terms of how he is supporting him as well as the people that work for him.
Speaker:So I am really excited to be, honestly, I'm just excited to pick your brain and learn from you.
Speaker:I don't even care about what the listeners think.
Speaker:I just want to learn from you.
Speaker:This show here, man.
Speaker:So a little bit about you, Lee, I'll give an intro and then, you know, feel free to fill in the gaps where I might miss the lead.
Speaker:He is the CEO and co founder of Sift.
Speaker:Sift is a platform that gives revenue leaders and reps a single place to do their research, to prioritize their accounts, to organize and collaborate on their territory and generate value messaging.
Speaker:And oh, by the way, when they're doing all this in one application, they can automate the most critical part, which is the value messaging.
Speaker:So we will dive a little bit more into what Sift actually does.
Speaker:I'm assuming throughout this conversation.
Speaker:Besides that, we used to work at both work day as well as oracle.
Speaker:So you have some big enterprise type company experience that you live in the beautiful city of Austin, Texas.
Speaker:I think you were born and raised with in Texas as well.
Speaker:That is the main gist that all my research through our conversations were talking to all of our mutual that I know about you.
Speaker:What did I miss within that opening.
Speaker:That was about it, man.
Speaker:You have to sift messaging down.
Speaker:It's interesting.
Speaker:It's been a while since we talked and you nailed it.
Speaker:You nailed it.
Speaker:Remind me, where do you live again?
Speaker:I forget.
Speaker:Where are you based?
Speaker:I am here in New York City.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm right in the heart of the Manhattan in Greenwich Village.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah, I need to make it up there.
Speaker:Haven't actually sift is sponsoring an event up there in the next month or so.
Speaker:It'll be interesting to be fun.
Speaker:One of my co founder Zach is going up there and he's all excited.
Speaker:He handles sales for us.
Speaker:He's a good dude actually known him since I was six.
Speaker:It's kind of fun to go through that with him.
Speaker:The fact that you have known somebody since six years old and I'm starting a company together is I think not a common history or background.
Speaker:And I'm assuming that helps you guys quite a bit, but we're going to get to that here in a second.
Speaker:So here's what I wanna do first.
Speaker:One unique trait or skill set about you, Lee that I have learned is that you are a self learner.
Speaker:And when I say self learner, you have self taught how to code, you are self taught on how to play the piano and you are self taught on how to speak Korean.
Speaker:So those are just some very unique facts about you.
Speaker:How does one even go about self teaching themselves how to do all those things?
Speaker:Are you good at it because it's part of your D N A and your competitive edge.
Speaker:I wouldn't say I'm good at all those things.
Speaker:But that's interesting.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I think learning is something that I'm just passionate about that.
Speaker:I'm really curious about the world and kind of always have something I'm trying to learn or a skill.
Speaker:I'm trying to build some, I've always been interested in doing and what's crazy is there's so many tools out there nowadays that the barriers to entry to learning anything is so low.
Speaker:And I think that's something that kind of love about the world today, which is really cool.
Speaker:I like that a lot.
Speaker:But yeah, definitely not an expert, especially Koreans.
Speaker:I'm working on that one.
Speaker:Still, I'm not going to be in Seoul anytime soon, just navigating around speaking fluent with everyone.
Speaker:But still in the process on that one.
Speaker:I think that is a powerful skill set to have.
Speaker:I personally am not the type of person who's self taught for me.
Speaker:I'm not a fan of going to the gym by myself just to work out myself.
Speaker:Usually I'm not saying I'm bad at that.
Speaker:But what I do love is I love being in community with other people as we are learning about a topic.
Speaker:So, you know, communities about sales community, about leadership even my workout classes today, whether it be F- 45 or berries or anything along those lines that I'm doing it with other people that at least is one of the places where I find the most influence.
Speaker:So I think it's.
Speaker:unique and that you have to be too self teaching.
Speaker:Do you have a strategy about how to do it or did you just get, you know, I want to learn everything about coding and just watch youtube's read books all that or do you have some of the actual technique?
Speaker:Yeah, for me, I don't know if I have a strategy.
Speaker:I think it just starts with being generally interested in something for coding.
Speaker:I went to medical school for a while and I was always pretty fascinated with science and stem things in general.
Speaker:But when I started coding neural networks where I guess making their comeback.
Speaker:So I was just really curious on the underlying code and architecture on how all of that worked.
Speaker:So that was actually the reason I started coding and then I started building their own networks back before that cool frameworks like tensorflow and keras and all of that existed hard coding, the linear algebra.
Speaker:So it was really good learning experience and understand the technology.
Speaker:But that's kind of where it starts.
Speaker:I think even when you're self taught things, I think you get to a point to where eventually bridging to start having some kind of community or find some kind of mentors that can help you.
Speaker:For example, piano self taught there for a while.
Speaker:But eventually it gets to a point where if you're in the piano, like your form can actually start to really hurt you and even your ability to play certain songs and then hurt your actual hands and forearms and start getting injuries and stuff.
Speaker:So I came to a point where I had reached the end of where I could get on my own so that I went out and got an instructor and got a little bit more help there, which kind of bridged you into the community.
Speaker:Peace.
Speaker:I feel like for me, it starts with interest and building from there and then going from there, I love that.
Speaker:I love the, it's the initial peaking of the interest that then you start doing it.
Speaker:You're probably really bad at it and you get a little bit better to the point where then it's time to go and find mentorship interview within it.
Speaker:Some of the people that were close to me when I was first learning piano had probably bleeding years for a little while.
Speaker:And they heard the same piece over and over again.
Speaker:And I still remember in college, I had a very good friend.
Speaker:He was also named Alex and he would stay up late at night until three in the morning playing piano where everybody else is trying to sleep.
Speaker:I lived right above man.
Speaker:That reminds me when I was first learning to code after medical school, I was working in Oracle.
Speaker:I first got in there on the legion team, but there's not a lot of time, you know, when you're working full time and you want to work out or be somewhat social afterwards, there's not a lot of time to go learn new things, especially intensive things like coding.
Speaker:So I would get up at five a.m.
Speaker:every morning at the time, Zach and I were actually living in the same place and I love smoothies in the morning and I have this totally ridiculous as a ninja like 1000 horsepower or something.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:So like shakes the house when it runs, it's so loud and I felt bad because Zach would be sleeping.
Speaker:It's five AM.
Speaker:I'll get my little smoothie maker, go and carry it into the closet and run it in there.
Speaker:There definitely are some people that have to work with you and be okay with some of the things you're doing.
Speaker:I wanna tie into just how you've gotten to where you are today.
Speaker:I mean, being the co founder and CEO of a tech company is by no means and easy feet and the path to get there is really hard.
Speaker:I would say it's probably one of the more challenging things that people can choose to do within their lives.
Speaker:Take me back to the beginning even before your CEO where does it start of what your unique path, as you mentioned that you went to medical school as well?
Speaker:Where does it start the journey for you that has led you to being where you are and caring about what you care about?
Speaker:Interesting question.
Speaker:I don't know, I feel like when you're growing up, there's always some kind of perception or some kind of role you start to settle into as a function of your community or your upbringing or whatever it might be.
Speaker:And for me, I happen to be pretty good at football growing up and I grew up in the Katy area.
Speaker:And so that was a big part of my life growing up.
Speaker:And then eventually I played football A and M played, might be a little bit of a stretch, but I was on the team and then at some, the point I kind of realized that it wasn't what I wanted to do and I wasn't big enough to go pro.
Speaker:I didn't have that incentive, but I think maybe it's there.
Speaker:If you take ownership of the decisions you have in your own life, the only limit and this kind of gets in the mental health stuff that I know you and I are both nerds on.
Speaker:But the only limit is really what you can think of frankly when you feel like you're trapped or you feel like you can't do a certain thing or there's still limitations, but it really is, it's like a mental box, right?
Speaker:You're getting yourself into your own mental box and you're the only one who's not allowing you to go do whatever it is.
Speaker:I think when I decided to stop playing football, that was a moment for me where I really started to feel that way.
Speaker:And from there it's just exploring the world and being generally curious and learning things.
Speaker:And then the concept of when I was in, in corporate America or so to speak, I've always liked to be able to do things like what I love and this is what I love about a startup.
Speaker:Probably what drove me to want to start my own company was the only limitation you have is your brain and what you can think of.
Speaker:I love that ability to do things differently to build whatever you want to build.
Speaker:I think that's the really cool things that I'm passionate about and giving yourself the space to be creative and do that.
Speaker:I think I have an underlying drive to do that, which I think shape my direction into wanting to do my own thing and start my own company.
Speaker:The only limitation you have is your brain and what you can think of that's really powerful statement right there.
Speaker:So what does that mean to you?
Speaker:Would you say that you in your life have battled with certain types of limitations?
Speaker:I did that with this frame.
Speaker:I have found that through my journey, the limiting beliefs that I had have groomed me and shaped me into the version of myself that I am like the challenges and the times where I felt the worst or the struggling the most.
Speaker:I even looked back to certain days in my early years of college.
Speaker:When I really struggled mentally, nobody would know it.
Speaker:But I struggled when I was early in my college years.
Speaker:And shortly after college, when I moved to San Francisco or some of my hardest years of my life and then moving out to New York City and starting a new life out here.
Speaker:Some of the days have been very limiting of who am I?
Speaker:What am I even doing?
Speaker:Am I good enough for any of this?
Speaker:I found that it was these limiting beliefs with these limitations that once I was truly able to be with them and to sit with them and then just allow those things to not try to push it away, but also just try to be like, hey, this is just a part of me, it's become part of my competitive edge.
Speaker:It's become part of one of my unique things about myself.
Speaker:So I'd be curious to know from you.
Speaker:What are some of those limiting beliefs, those limitations that you set for yourself that you've had to overcome.
Speaker:There's two things there like when people are deeply introspective or start to really be interested in mental health and it becomes a big part of their life.
Speaker:I feel like there's two ways to get there.
Speaker:There's a million more, but two main ways come to mind for me.
Speaker:But one is you have someone that I guess is impactful or really helps show you how to be that or helps guide you into that manner of thinking.
Speaker:And then the other way, which sounds like the path maybe you took in the path I had, but there's some kind of event or something you struggled with or some kind of pain that kind of forced you in that direction.
Speaker:And that's part of why I became so passionate mental health.
Speaker:I think what you said earlier is nobody you know it right that you're struggling with these things.
Speaker:I think a lot of times top performers are that way.
Speaker:It's easy to present the front, especially when you're a skilled person like yourself.
Speaker:It's easy to present the perfect front even though you might be struggling with things internally.
Speaker:So that's the way I think about it.
Speaker:And I kind of wish that mental health or psychology was taught even earlier in school.
Speaker:The one thing you always have in life is your brain, right?
Speaker:And it's the most powerful tool you have.
Speaker:But no one really understands it.
Speaker:No one knows anything about it.
Speaker:No one knows much about emotions, at least intentionally.
Speaker:So it's just fascinating seeing the places you can go and the things you can think of, if you're introspective, there's a lot of different paths to get there.
Speaker:It is very true.
Speaker:I mean, I totally wish that I could go back to middle school or high school, even elementary that is teaching me some sort of psychology, some sort of mental health health.
Speaker:I don't even think that mental health was that talked about until recently.
Speaker:I probably mental health thing came out when Michael Phelps was struggling and that really set the trajectory of, hey guys, this is a thing.
Speaker:Our best and shining athlete, good looking guy strong has it all is struggling.
Speaker:And all of a sudden more people started to come out and yeah, personally, I struggle with mental health every day.
Speaker:It's something that it's always there in certain days, I can feel great in certain days, I can feel terrible.
Speaker:But knowing that depression or anxiety or whatever it is, it really runs in my family, whether it be sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, you name it like it's prevalent there.
Speaker:The thing that I've always felt is the best way to be with your mental health is through the art of meditation, through the art of breath, work, through the art of journaling exercise.
Speaker:And at least for me personally, one of the most important ways that I support my mental health is through my spirituality, my relationship with God and really feeling like I'm serving something greater because I feel like so often when I feel myself at my lowest even I look back to three months ago.
Speaker:I was just like a tough moment and it was because it was all about me.
Speaker:It was all about, what do people think about me?
Speaker:How am I showing up?
Speaker:I'm not enough and really outside of what's the greater thing that I'm serving?
Speaker:That's beyond just myself.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:That's at least my perspective on mental health is a great asset to use, to work, to figure out to not be in a certain place.
Speaker:I hear you and feel you, I feel like genetics plays a big role in that.
Speaker:And sometimes you don't always win the genetic lottery on some of those things.
Speaker:But I think you said this earlier, it's something that ultimately if you approach it the right way and you can work with it, it can be, I think a differential or something that's really helpful in your life, both personally and professionally.
Speaker:I think that the way you think about things and connect with people can be different.
Speaker:And that was, I think what really turned me on to mental health in general is I've been a very kind of fact based like science person.
Speaker:When you hear something said it's like I'm not annoying person, show me the data that supports it.
Speaker:And so I was going through this and I didn't know a ton on the Eastern based religions meditation.
Speaker:So I started looking into that more and I found that people have been studying some of the Buddhist monks, for example, and when they're meditating, doing some things, they're actually changing their brain patterns.
Speaker:Like you can physically see that their brains are making neural pathways that weren't there before then.
Speaker:I started getting fascinating.
Speaker:Oh my God, there's hard biological changes that are happening here.
Speaker:And so I really started diving into it today and I take some of the Eastern practices and superimpose that with some of the Western psychology, I guess that's probably a relatively naive way to state that.
Speaker:But it's an interesting combination of kind of the emotional and logical.
Speaker:And when that meets, I think that's where I got really fascinated with it.
Speaker:When you start to view the world with that lens, I think it's really helpful in a lot of different aspects.
Speaker:Although into earlier point getting there sometimes isn't always the greatest.
Speaker:It is very interesting that we do have the ability to change it.
Speaker:We do have a way to change the synapses in the neural pathways that we have in our brain to be reestablished.
Speaker:I still remember one time in New York, I went to this incredible art exhibit and you walk in, it's just essentially light shows on all the walls for ceilings about the brain, starting from the very beginning.
Speaker:Sell to them just growing and getting memories and getting beliefs and different things.
Speaker:It's really an incredible organism that I think you said earlier.
Speaker:It could be a massive how you had.
Speaker:Obviously, it keeps us living and breathing, man.
Speaker:They can get infested, there can get tough energies that are on it that you wake up.
Speaker:You're like, dude, what is this?
Speaker:Is this me?
Speaker:Is this Ami or is this like a different spirit or demon that somehow gotten into my system and is taking over and how we go about keeping our brain clean.
Speaker:One thing that I do is something called network care chiropractic and essentially it's a formal chiropractor that feels like voodoo, like straight up, it feels like voodoo.
Speaker:You sit on this massage table on your belly and the chiropractor comes over and he touches different parts of your spine and of your neck.
Speaker:He's not poking it or anything like pinching.
Speaker:It is just like playing with the energy above it and you literally start to feel your spine and your neck and your tailbone and your heart starts to like move because we've held up these different stresses, these different anxieties, these experiences traumas in our spine in different types of ways that caused them to clench and stay in that state.
Speaker:And the whole purpose of doing this is to go in there to release that energy and to allow that current coming from your brain down through your body and all the way back up again and to free that up, that's one way that I go about hopefully changing my brain synapses by checking first getting a massage but not massage.
Speaker:It's definitely not a massage.
Speaker:No, that's interesting.
Speaker:I haven't heard of that.
Speaker:It is fascinating how like a purely mental construct and have physical impacts even on the body to your point if you're stressed out, but your attention, your shoulders because of it or wherever it might be.
Speaker:I think everyone has something slightly different that works for them too.
Speaker:So it sounds like you have a couple that you go to and I think that's important.
Speaker:I think it starts with general awareness that you are experiencing a certain thing, right?
Speaker:You need to go do that form of called stress release or something to put it very simplistic, but that's because you were aware of it first, right?
Speaker:I think in some sense is even hard to be aware of, which is in some aspects, mental health and upkeep of it can be challenging in itself even if you are aware of it.
Speaker:But if you're not, that's obviously you, you can't manage what you can't see, right?
Speaker:There's that aspect and then even if you are aware of it, I think of this earlier too, it can be a daily battle, right?
Speaker:But it is also a choice, right?
Speaker:You can stay trapped there or you can choose, I'm not gonna identify with this pain or with this issue and work to change it.
Speaker:Even though sometimes it can be frustrating that you even have to do that and it can be hard to really get back to the fact that you really, you do have a choice with it.
Speaker:So it's good that you have a couple of different ways that you can deal with it and work through it.
Speaker:It's hard to detach though from the feeling or the emotion of it.
Speaker:I'd love to understand what you do yourself to support your mental health journey.
Speaker:But I'll first say that when I feel whether it be sadness or I feel insecurity, come up, the naming of it is really important.
Speaker:And one of the ways I say I was taught this through parts work and saying, hey, I don't feel sad.
Speaker:I say there's a part of me that feels sad, prevents yourself from brainwashing yourself just to identify completely with.
Speaker:I am sadness.
Speaker:No, you are not sadness.
Speaker:There's a part of you that feels sad.
Speaker:That part could either To be sad from something that just happened or there's a part that happened from something 15 years ago and I still haven't healed or grieved or released that.
Speaker:And so I hold that up and that comes out and lashes out and I used to be somebody who, when people would ask, Hey, how are you, Alex?
Speaker:I used to say I'm always awesome.
Speaker:Always awesome.
Speaker:I used to say that over and over again.
Speaker:I thought it was so cool saying that because I always thought too soon is like number one, if I say that they're going to feel a little bit more awesome because we're gonna feel my vibe.
Speaker:And number two, hopefully the word awesome will go in my ear and brainwash myself into thinking I am doing awesome.
Speaker:And there's value in that, especially when you need to show up when you're not feeling super awesome.
Speaker:But it's also incredibly unhealthy because it's pushing down these like deep rooted feelings of.
Speaker:Actually, I'm pretty fucked up.
Speaker:I'm not super stoked and it's, you're lying to yourself.
Speaker:And then that causes one to be out of rapport with themselves and not whole putting on a projection and hiding the shadow and that there's a whole lot that comes from that.
Speaker:So I know you talk to yourself is really important.
Speaker:I feel like earlier when you're saying essentially label your emotions and higher feeling, I've read so many books on mental health and psychology and happiness in general.
Speaker:It's a fascinating topic to me and that's one of the big strategies is when you're feeling angry or sad or whatever is labeled, I'm feeling this way.
Speaker:And then I like that you add in a part of me is feeling this way because you're getting out even more of identifying with whatever it is.
Speaker:I feel every cognitive behavioral therapist is jumping up and down and clapping that you just said that right now because how you talk to yourself is important and little subliminal things you talk to yourself can reinforce a direction, either way you're bad at some issue or something.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:If you're telling yourself, I messed up, I'm so bad at piano.
Speaker:I'm so bad at having conversations with certain people about certain things.
Speaker:Well, inherently in that is your labeling yourself as bad at that thing.
Speaker:But a better way to say it for a more healthy way to say it might be until now I've been not as good as I would have liked to been at this thing.
Speaker:But it's a very subtle but important difference.
Speaker:And I like the aspect of their going down late, enabling it and having that conversation with yourself.
Speaker:But again, it goes back to, are you aware of where your mind is and your emotions?
Speaker:And that's half the battle or maybe even more?
Speaker:And I think that's the hardest part.
Speaker:I always view it as the first step is to become aware of it.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:But then at least for me, like how my brain just works.
Speaker:And this goes back to my love for psychology and spirituality and mental health.
Speaker:I would say okay, that's the pinprick of it.
Speaker:What's under that?
Speaker:Why am I like that?
Speaker:And that's where the personal work, the working with, whether it be a therapist or a coach or in communities that I love the, let's dive into this, let's try to figure this out.
Speaker:And I've participated in plant medicine to support me through that on retreats.
Speaker:I've got an eight day silent meditation retreat.
Speaker:You're not talking down to men's weekends where just like men talking about their feelings.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:I'm addicted to that work.
Speaker:Actually, I wanted to go deeper and deeper.
Speaker:I love hearing different perspectives about my life and that's what I love talking about.
Speaker:But there's very few times where people like you think or do this sort of thing.
Speaker:I'm like, no, I know I'm not even, I can tell you why I do that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's good.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:Yeah, I want to go back to a question I asked earlier, what are some of the things that you do, my friend to support yourself from a mental health way?
Speaker:How are you holding yourself accountable?
Speaker:Love that example of until now that is one great frame right there.
Speaker:But what else?
Speaker:Always until now?
Speaker:I'm not great at that one.
Speaker:But I try.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So things I do I think for me there's like the baseline things, one of the highest correlated things with happiness, so to speak is gratitude, right?
Speaker:And so I try to every morning think of something, you know, that you're grateful for and there's a lot of ways to do that.
Speaker:Actually, I, at one point struck, I would feel grateful for things, but it was almost like I didn't really connect with it.
Speaker:It's like I'm mentally ungrateful for this, but I didn't quite feel it grateful for it.
Speaker:But imagine if it wasn't there, if you have this at all, you're grateful for your family.
Speaker:In the abstract.
Speaker:I understand that.
Speaker:But then imagine you didn't have your family.
Speaker:That's one thing that I'm really big on.
Speaker:And I try to be grateful too for things that are the absence of certain things, which is hard to do as well.
Speaker:If you're not waking up every day in chronic pain, it's not really on your mind to be grateful for not having chronic pain, right?
Speaker:But for those who have chronic pain, they will tell you it is one of the worst things on the entire planet to experience being grateful for things that don't like proving a negative, so to speak are hard to do.
Speaker:But I try to do the kind of grateful practice.
Speaker:I try to meditate at least once a day.
Speaker:I'm really big on which if you're interested in, you're listening to this.
Speaker:Hopefully you get interested in that waking up is an application on your phone that I started using for that.
Speaker:And they start you off by teaching you how to meditate, so to speak, some of its guided.
Speaker:But that's really good.
Speaker:I've, and that really was really helpful to get me started on it.
Speaker:And then the final thing that I'm really big on is journaling.
Speaker:I feel like journaling really helps you get your thoughts out, even things you didn't even know you wanted to talk about that.
Speaker:We're locked inside your head.
Speaker:But those are the big three that I do.
Speaker:I try to do that consistently and whenever I'm feeling bad, I look back and I was like, what falling off on a couple of those that's probably wise to pick it back up, get back into it.
Speaker:You're inspiring me to get more into gratitude because I don't do that nearly enough.
Speaker:Like one of the things that I learned from my mother is she said before you say your prayers at night, just say what are three things you're grateful for from the day and you end up going to bed.
Speaker:I think the gratitude practice.
Speaker:I love your frame of.
Speaker:Imagine if you didn't have it, that almost set a punch in my stomach was like, oh, I didn't have my family.
Speaker:Oh my God.
Speaker:I'm so freaking grateful for them if I didn't have my health.
Speaker:Oh my God.
Speaker:I was so grateful for that.
Speaker:If I didn't have my best friend CJ from growing up, man, I'm grateful for CJ people along those lines and those things.
Speaker:I think that's so powerful.
Speaker:I one time did a 100 day gratitude channel.
Speaker:I think it's called Gratis shift run by a guy named Toni Childs.
Speaker:And he would do this course was like a weekly thing.
Speaker:But every single morning you had to read this journal thing.
Speaker:It was the same thing every day.
Speaker:One of things I would say, I'm grateful for my ears that I can hear from my legs that I can walk my hands that I could hold, be required to say it out loud.
Speaker:And each day there was a different journal prompt that you had to write about something you're grateful for.
Speaker:And initially, there was seven days, 20 days, whatever it was.
Speaker:And I was like, you know, this is cool, but this is like taking time.
Speaker:And I still remember, I'm driving home from work one day and I'm listening to a podcast, I'm listening, I'm listening to the Rich Roll podcast was like one of my favorites.
Speaker:And he said something really powerful and I'm like, damn, I'm grateful for my ears so I can listen to this cast.
Speaker:This is probably why you fall off.
Speaker:You only have a finite amount of energy and time in the day and at some point and they feel like chores or you start to fall off of it and I forget where I was reading.
Speaker:This is tech knocked on or something like one of those books.
Speaker:But he said something like you try to meditate for 10-20 minutes every day.
Speaker:If you feel like you don't have the time to do that, then meditate, you need to meditate for an hour.
Speaker:It was really fascinating.
Speaker:I love that story that you told.
Speaker:How do you journal, what do you journal on?
Speaker:I used to have some templates that I would do because apparently I have to organize everything.
Speaker:It's funny, one of my co founders, our brains think very differently, which I love the butt heads a lot.
Speaker:But we always end up in a better spot because of it.
Speaker:I'm super organized and he's less so.
Speaker:But we kind of met in the middle.
Speaker:I use an app called Day One cause apparently I use an app to do everything, which is a really cool journaling app and you can create templates and things that you want to go in there.
Speaker:She used to have like a daily template, a weekly template, but now I just have tried to give myself more space, so to speak on what and how I'm doing it because I feel like the flip side of being hyper efficient, focused and hyper, I guess template ties helps you in the sense that you can get more done every day.
Speaker:But the flip side of that is, is you don't necessarily change what you do every day and kind of experience new things or write new things.
Speaker:The best way to be efficient is to create some kind of schedule, right?
Speaker:And just really nail it every day.
Speaker:So if we fight my side that does that personally.
Speaker:But apparently in journaling now too, so I just open it up and to start writing.
Speaker:And then if it's ever one of those things that you feel like you don't have anything to write about just start writing that I don't have anything to write about, usually disclose from there.
Speaker:So you can get to some interesting spots from that.
Speaker:I want to touch on something you said, especially I'm assuming being a CEO as a sales leader myself or even as a sales professional when I was your days have to be linear, right?
Speaker:They have to be okay, especially I think of sales call, okay.
Speaker:I have to set a powerful pre frame.
Speaker:I need to set the agenda.
Speaker:I need to ask the good discovery questions.
Speaker:And then I need to give my pitch of here's the trends we're seeing the problems we solve.
Speaker:And here's what our solution is.
Speaker:There's a very specific framework about how to do that.
Speaker:And then also I look at my calendar and certain days and playing Tetris trying to figure out where I can actually even put things.
Speaker:So back to back, I still remember I went to an eight day meditation retreat at that I mentioned earlier and one of the models of the very being of each day is space and the awareness of space, meditation is space and the awareness of space.
Speaker:I found it so profound, such a meaningful phrase.
Speaker:And I now I look at my calendar, there's very few places to allow for space and awareness of the space.
Speaker:That's just something I'm learning right now about how do I allow myself to have direction and drive towards a specific area and sit back and almost in a state of meditation at all times.
Speaker:Right now, I can tap into a state of meditation.
Speaker:How can you get a moment to moment?
Speaker:That's crazy.
Speaker:Hard talking to someone about that.
Speaker:They said, try to have hooks throughout the day that you can reset and get back into the moment.
Speaker:Something you said just now that I'm fascinated by is you get so busy, right?
Speaker:It's like you get so busy in the day.
Speaker:You forget to even think about how busy you are on the day.
Speaker:Your data's blends together and you're in the day like, wow, what did I even do today?
Speaker:Because it was too much to even manage and what I found that it was happening to a lot of sales organizations.
Speaker:I feel like to, you Get so busy and your brain is so full and you're doing so many things at once.
Speaker:You're doing everything at 70% of how good you could be doing it.
Speaker:If you just slow down and really give yourself the space to think about it and be creative about it and be present with whatever that task is.
Speaker:And a lot of times I feel like in sales organizations, for example, you're going to a presentation, right?
Speaker:And instead of stopping and thinking about the company you're working with or the problem that they have or the way that you can solve it or the value and you helping them solve it, you end up just rushing and grabbing whatever templates out there from a power point that monitor appears.
Speaker:Did, are you using a different deal and you change the logos and repurpose it and now you're off and running, right?
Speaker:But you haven't slowed down to really think about.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:This is a different company, a different deal, different problem in a similar space as some of the other deals you get so busy, there's so little time to do it and you just feel like there's never enough time.
Speaker:So you try to be most efficient and pull the template, right?
Speaker:When, if you just slow down and we're thoughtful about it, you'll probably get in a lot better space and sometimes you'll probably even figure out that some of the busy work you're doing, you don't need to do it because there's a way to shortcut and get around that item.
Speaker:I'm still trying to figure that out from starting a company.
Speaker:There's never enough time, there's constant prioritization of what to be doing.
Speaker:How do you create space for the people you work with and the employees that ultimately come onto your company to slow down and have that creativity and have the ability to innovate even how they're doing things or whether they should be doing things, right?
Speaker:Something I'm fascinated with, I think Google or some of the companies do these and kind of like code camps, but I'm interested is as we grow as a company can we almost like schedule or force some of our employees to slow down and spend some time or spend some moments just really thinking, what would I do differently or better if I had infinite things to do where I could do anything?
Speaker:What would that look like?
Speaker:You're not allowed to work on your typical day?
Speaker:You're not allowed to do any of that from a business perspective.
Speaker:I feel like a lot of coding has been working with that.
Speaker:Like, hey, here's the weekend we're gonna work on projects like a hacker thon or whatever it might be.
Speaker:But I feel like from a business perspective in the other spots like hr operation sales, there's so much opportunity to work there, for example, was a concentration of sales reps that were absolute.
Speaker:It's incredible.
Speaker:Some of the best sales talent I've ever been a part of.
Speaker:But if you give them more time and space to be creative, you'd be in such a better spot, but it's so hard to do because everyone's so overworked.
Speaker:So yes, we said earlier, slowing down and giving yourself the space and being aware of where you're in.
Speaker:It's hard to do.
Speaker:But it'd be interesting if you could help people do that in your organization.
Speaker:Multiple comments here to that because that was a profound statement.
Speaker:There's a lot there.
Speaker:I kind of kind of, you know, oh damn.
Speaker:Oh damn.
Speaker:So, first off the space there, if you say slow down and it will be better, we literally don't have time for two back to back.
Speaker:There's too many things.
Speaker:It's partially because if we allow people to stop and be in a state of creativity at the end of the day, it's not working towards this very singular goal.
Speaker:As a company, everybody starts to drift off and have their own ideas.
Speaker:And I'm not saying that stuff is not unbelievably valuable because some of the best ideas come for that.
Speaker:But working towards the same goal is really hard.
Speaker:The second thing I would say is I love the change, not just change the logos on the power point, but actually think about what's going on with their business.
Speaker:That's so good, right?
Speaker:They're starting to even use their phrases and to put yourself in their shoes and think about things the way that they are thinking about things.
Speaker:One of the things that I am very much about is I'm an over prepare at times.
Speaker:I need to really make sure this is good.
Speaker:There could be over to the point where because I don't trust myself, go up and be naturally good enough, but there's a fine line right there between the two.
Speaker:And it's interesting, I guess this is getting back to the topic of slowing down and really thinking about the business when we started sift I thought was really a big problem is you're so busy you're working on so many things, all the data out there, even if in sales, there's a million different systems, right?
Speaker:Which is kind of the problem.
Speaker:But even getting the data on your accounts or whatever company you want to focus, it is incredibly challenging, right?
Speaker:You can go think about the process of, hey, here's your accounts and territory and your number.
Speaker:I need to do a couple of things where I can get to even talking to them, right?
Speaker:I need to go in here.
Speaker:I need to research them all based on that research, figure out a way to prioritize them, get them into some kind of territory, organization plans.
Speaker:People use this righteous whatever.
Speaker:I probably have extended teams to go collaborate on it from there.
Speaker:It's ultimately go and take all of this that you have in the beginning and then go build some kind of value perspective or value messaging for your accounts, right?
Speaker:That process should be a relatively seamless horizontal process of, hey, here's my accounts all the way to, here's my value message on why it makes sense for my company to work with these accounts and scaling that to all of your different potential prospects.
Speaker:That's what we're trying to do with sift and it comes back to every company essentially is unique, right?
Speaker:It's about what problem do they have and what solution do we have that can solve that problem?
Speaker:And then what's the value in doing that, which there's so many things that distract you from getting into that core goal or core messaging of slowing down.
Speaker:And why am I working with this company?
Speaker:If you can do that at scale, you take away a lot of the things that distract you from ultimately what sales is, right?
Speaker:Which is you have a problem with a solution of value in solving it and you have people come together to do that.
Speaker:That's what we're trying to automate at sift in general is that process, right?
Speaker:It's not about the data, right?
Speaker:It's not about going and collecting all this stuff and researching accounts.
Speaker:That's just a means to an end to get to where you want, right?
Speaker:Which is value selling.
Speaker:How do we bring value to these companies of problems we can solve and that's what we want to automate and generate that value messaging for our customers so they can take it ultimately to their potential customers.
Speaker:Then you take a lot of the busy work and a lot of the things that are really not important ultimately to what you want to do in problem solving.
Speaker:And you can get the focus back to the problem solving.
Speaker:Everyone wins, which I know sounds Kumbaya, but I am passionate about that because I have a love hate relationship with sales refocus sales back on the problem solution and value set, so to speak, give yourself the space to really focus on that instead of just grabbing a spreadsheet template or power point template and rinsing and repeating it.
Speaker:A lot of really great things can happen in that future, which is something that I really want to work towards building with shift.
Speaker:I love how you tied that back of sift is actually helping exactly what I was just saying to allow people to be more creative I e to the problem solving and to automate a certain part of the stuff that says, hey, you don't need to think about this stuff.
Speaker:At least the beginning stages and the crafting of it, the value messaging, tailoring it that does solve a serious problem.
Speaker:It allows spaciousness and the awareness of it.
Speaker:Hopefully, Yeah, every company is unique but I feel like in sales, it comes down, I call it the spreadsheet double source, double sort, right?
Speaker:When you're trying to make a territory plan, you get a spreadsheet of accounts and you go in and you sorted descending by employees and then descending by revenue.
Speaker:And that's where you start, right?
Speaker:Like no one buys this product because I'm 20,000 employees and I have four billion in revenue.
Speaker:They buy a product because they have a certain business problem.
Speaker:There's a certain solution that can solve it and there's a value that triangulate all of it.
Speaker:But that's at scale for a salesperson hard to get to if you can automate essentially presenting all of those things to a salesperson as they're trying to go add value to one of their customers, which is really nowadays the only way to sell and those who aren't doing and I feel like are gonna fall behind is coming in with a perspective on the value we can bring when that takes so much time to do if you can automate, hey, based on all the things we have about this company, here's the problem that they likely have and viewing it from a lens of what our potential customers can do to solve that problem.
Speaker:You can say, hey, here's the problem that we have.
Speaker:Here's how you're so solution aligns to that problem.
Speaker:And here's the value and you guys working together, you can do 80 or 90% of the value alignment and then you can free up space and time for those reps at scale and their accounts, which is really what hurts you like the best reps and top 1%.
Speaker:That's what they're doing.
Speaker:They can only do it for five accounts at a time at most, right?
Speaker:When they know what they need to be doing across all of them, there's just no time so you can automate as much as possible.
Speaker:I feel like it's somewhere that is really fascinating, really interesting that we can improve on.
Speaker:And then from there selling obviously is fundamentally changing with the technologies like GPT three and just how sales has been working from a sense of a lot of vendors, unfortunately just blast out messaging with some of these really powerful tools like outreach, which I think you're very familiar with over here and there can become tone deaf, right?
Speaker:And that hurts the buyers and the sellers, right.
Speaker:There's so many resources that go into sending out that messaging whether or not the person has the problem.
Speaker:And then the buyers, I think I want to tell you now look at your inbox and there's 1000 emails that really have nothing to do with the problem you might have.
Speaker:There's a lot of inefficiency on both sides.
Speaker:But if you can start to at scale, look at what's the problems companies have and then what solutions can come and solve those problems and then match them, which is what we call that set.
Speaker:The value match that's ultimately longer term where we want to get, we can start to match companies based on problem solution sets and then automate the process around all of that.
Speaker:But it starts with core understanding the problem and solution value chain, which is where we are today and how to automate a lot of those things.
Speaker:Yeah, that sounds really powerful coming in with a perspective already of how specifically your solution can solve their specific problems based on who what and where they are all that.
Speaker:Alright man.
Speaker:I'll take a demo.
Speaker:You sold me man.
Speaker:It took almost an hour into this podcast and I'm in, I want to see it.
Speaker:So we're getting up to the top of the hour, man.
Speaker:I love where this conversation is gone.
Speaker:I feel like we've talked about not just one but a few of my favorite things around leadership, around mental health, especially and around sales.
Speaker:So thank you for the journey of taking us there.
Speaker:I have one final question that I ask all my guests and before I get to it, man, I just, I just want to acknowledge you for showing up here on this call, starting your own company being a thought leader when it comes to how organizations go to market and also your focus and diligence on mental health.
Speaker:And how important that is.
Speaker:I love your vision.
Speaker:Two of the one day being able to give your team or those times to creative as well and that just shows the type of leader you are.
Speaker:So thank you for being you.
Speaker:My final ask is this man, this podcast is called the rising leader podcast.
Speaker:From your perspective.
Speaker:What type of leader is rising and needed in this world?
Speaker:That's an interesting question.
Speaker:I think it is a combination of a certain vision that you see in the world that you want to help create our impact.
Speaker:And then how do you want to gather a team or support people that can share that vision?
Speaker:How can you be the best version of yourself for those people as well and get them to where they want to go, I guess it comes down to intent, right?
Speaker:How can you combine the vision and the business aspects of where you want to go with the emotional and personal component of ultimately, companies are aggregations of people, right?
Speaker:And how do you triangulate those things ultimately to get both the organization people to where you need to go at this vision?
Speaker:And I think it all comes down to intent.
Speaker:How can you better support people and figure out what is that they want to do and how they want to get and be intentional about that.
Speaker:I think the rest of it kind of falls into place from there.
Speaker:Rambling, answer your questions.
Speaker:I feel like it looks different for everyone, but it all comes down to intent, which I guess sounds fluffy.
Speaker:But I think the intent aspect is important and not disregarding the emotional compote of wanting the best for the people you're with.
Speaker:I think those are the most important pieces from my perspective on a good leader.
Speaker:And then of course, acting on it without the action piece can have the best intent, but nothing really gets done showing up with actions where your intent and words are.
Speaker:That's where the magic is.
Speaker:I love that answer, man.
Speaker:I want to just phrase that in my own way, being in alignment, in terms of your act, actions, your thoughts, the ways you go at things in alignment with you call it intent.
Speaker:I call it your greater y the thing beyond just yourself.
Speaker:And when you can get a group of people in alignment with your greater y your true, why is coming?
Speaker:I believe from that sweet spot.
Speaker:That spot.
Speaker:That means truly well.
Speaker:And if you can do that is the rising leader and to be in report with that version of yourself.
Speaker:So dog, I'll take that answer for sure.
Speaker:I think you might have said that one better.
Speaker:Definitely more succinctly.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:All right, Haley brother.
Speaker:I appreciate this man.
Speaker:This was like wonderful Jamie.
Speaker:Like I could have gone three hours here with you next time.
Speaker:I'm in Austin, man.
Speaker:I'm for sure hitting you up and thanks for being on the show and for all those listeners who joined the rights of the podcast.
Speaker:Thank you and Lee, talk to your brother.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Thanks for having me.
Speaker:Love what you're doing here.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to the Rising Leader podcast.
Speaker:Make sure you hit that follow button.
Speaker:So you get notified every time a new episode releases, if you know someone who wants to take their lives and their career to the next level, sending this episode, so we can all rise together for more information.
